Excerpt from a “Memoir Fear and Counquering it.”

She woke up with so much pain she never realized you could hurt so bad. She knew she was alive because of the pain. She looked around there was no one, she was in a bed in a white room.There was a needle in her arm attached to a tube, going to a bag hanging from a pole. She blinked and looked again. Everything was the same. It was so quiet, she tried to move her legs, they wouldn’t move, her arm throbbed. She looked,- it was in a cast, her mouth wouldn’t open, one eye couldn’t open. She was scared… about to panic…

Then a face was there, a nurse was bending over her and was saying something, but she couldn’t hear her. She moved her head a little it hurt.

“Can you hear me?” The nurse shouted. She nodded her head a slighty.

“Do you know where you are?”

She moved her head back and forth. Tears started rolling from the corners of her bewildered eyes.

“No! no! don’t cry, it will only make things worse. Please, you are safe here.” The nurse, lifting her voice to be heard. “You had a terrible beating. Your husband is in jail, so he can’t hurt you anymore and your baby is safe, he didn’t injure you there.”

She could tell what the nurse was saying by watching her mouth, with her one good eye. She remembered the beating now. Bennett came home drunk and very angry. He always took his anger out on her. Nothing she could say or do would stop him. She sent the boys to the back-yard and tried to stay out of the reach of his fists. He’d been fired for drinking on the job and causing an accident with the equipment.

He’d yelled! “It’s your fault, you never do anything right, that’s why I drink. You can’t even have supper ready when I get home. You just keep having babies and pull me down. I’ll teach you to have a hot meal ready for me when I get home, or you’ll get more of this.”

She was clumsy with this pregnancy, at eight months she couldn’t move fast enough. He used his fists at first and just in her face. When she tried to get away he grabbed her arm and twisted until she heard it snap. He let her go and picked up the broom handle, the first blow sent her to the floor. She’d curled in a ball around her baby, he could only hit her back and head, not the baby. She felt each Wack, Wack,-Wack,… then nothing… everything went black.